Sunday, November 08, 2009

WHY?

We look on the self offering of the young soldiers who are killed or maimed with respect and admiration, but still the question: why?

The reasons for the conflict make us ask: why?

The continued presence, the inadequate government support, the lack of equipment makes us ask: why?

The inadequate explanations by government ministers make us ask: why?

The lack of a foreseeable and positive outcome makes us ask: why?

Young soldiers being blown apart in Afghanistan, to defend a corrupt regime there some how means that young Muslims from the Midlands are not going to blow up London's transport system, merely makes one ask: why?

19 comments:

The love of money is the root of all evil, so scripture says. One wonders if higher worldly powers are at work these days. I'm not pointing the finger at the rich with that comment. I've seen me, as a child always notice the biggest slice of cake. Maybe sometimes being poorer than most is a blessing. My God chose to be born in an animals bed. Perhaps this loss of life, on all sides, this continuing struggle against good and evil, evil being diabolical, yet we are subject to it, non the less brings about salvation to individual souls. Somehow, what Christ Jesus accomplished on the Cross will make sense to us one day. It makes absolute sense to The Father today, it is we who see through the dimly lit mirror, but we are promised a full vision in the next world(can we bear that?).My son was almost murdered two years ago, a precious Priest prayed for his healing, and my son recovered. The same Priest took his own life last year, only a young man. It altered my belief and life drastically. Our Lady came to my aid, she who knows suffering like no other, not just with her own precious son, but with taking on all of us as her children. She is my only sense, and God knows I am full of nonsense most days. Mary restores,that is the truth, in my experience.Cling to Our Lady, when in doubt.

WHY?.A very good question,we have been swamped by misinformation and lies by our Government and the GARBAGE PRESS,a survey undertaken by somebody or something has shown that we are all completely confused.

After Russia decided that the game wasn't worth the candle and their adventure in the area had virtually turned into a full scale conflict with US backed Mujahideen,Pakistan and Saudi Arabia something else happened.

A gang of Saudis with plenty of money that they had acquired in the process of fighting Russia decided to settle some old scores by finishing off the job they had attempted earlier and destroyed parts of NEW YORK.

Without thinking too carefully the USA decided to get the leader of Mujahideen at all costs so they sent in B52s to flatten the mountains where that leader was said to be hiding.

This fantastic plan was an abject failure so now half the World is involved in something they do not understand.

Is it possible that the real target of all this is really Iran? It is a bit convoluted but it is very central to the USA EMPIRE.

I think it is true to say that during the past 100 years the human race has committed more acts of unspeakable cruelty and evil to each other than at any other period in history. The corollary is that those acts inspire others to commit acts of incredible kindness, healing and love but, often, they are they ones we don't hear about.

Our Lady has already been referred to in this context and, speaking personally, I have in the past three years or so received wonderful examples of healing, love and understanding from Our Lady of Walsingham.

It is always the case that each year about this time, our hearts are broken by tales of desparate sadness (and also raised by tales of sheer goodness in adversity). This year is worst than most because of the war in Afghanistan; the scenes, over and over again, of Wootton Bassett turning out to honour the dead and console the grieving are the cause of much sad and thoughtful prayer. As you celebrated the Requiem this morning, you obviously asked the question: why?I think it is because, all questions of oil and greed and pwer-mongering aside (all of which are clearly factors), the West is gradually realing that a radical Islam is a threat to world stability. If it is not contained in the mountains of Afghanistan it wil infect Pakistan, and then the whole Middle East.Did it not cross your mind when offering Readings last week, that what is said there of the Maccabees could be said of the Taliban. The similarities are all too obvious, and both powered by a religious sense of absolute truth, to be enforced even at the point of the sword(especially at the point of the sward). In the fundamentalist Koranic mindset of these people there is no argument and no conciliation; no round-table conferences or treaties.The Judaeo-Christian west is at stake.Perhaps that is why?AffectionatelyFr Christopher Back

We are being told over and over that it is imperative that we defeat the "enemy" in their own country.Where is that?

Our security services are worse than useless in countering terrorists,they have installed thousands of cameras on the excuse that we will be safer but they are used to spy on innocent people who are confused or confounded by petty regulations about rubbish disposal,parking or getting their children into a decent School.

There is something seriously wrong in our society when we have to go to WAR to keep our minds off what is really going on.

During the next six months we are going to have to listen to those free-loaders talking about what they will do.The best thing we can do on polling day is stay at home because they are all USELESS

Remind me again how emboldened terrorists are when good people do nothing?

"It's not happening here. Yet." Gets more dead people in the end. I am with you in thinking once committed, the job must be finished.

It's BECAUSE terrorists don't play by "gentleman's rules." They don't care how many innocent people they kill who have nothing to do with conflict.

Post WWI, because of all that horror, the people of western Europe put their faith in the toothless League of Nations -- and they had decided it wasn't really "necessary" to keep standing armies, and oh, BTW, decided to rake over Germany monetarily -- causing hyper-inflation. Nature abhors a vacuum, and Hitler who promised all things to rebuild Germany was able to weasel his way in - He wasn't supposed to be able to have a standing army either -- but he didn't need to play by anyone's rules, because someone has to enforce those rules, and the west couldn't be "bothered" to do anything about him remilitarizing the Rhineland, years before schedule.

But, hey, no harm, no foul? Right? He later admitted had the French et al DONE something THEN to stop it they would not have prevailed. Churchill was in the wilderness, saying Germany could not be appeased. But on, no. Too HARD. "We don't want war, we want peace." Rule number one -- we don't get to decide how peaceful OTHER people are going to be. So Chamberlain and those other ankle grabbers watched while Hilter gobbled up the Austria and the Sudatenland. "The gentlemen" quibbled, that "well, Austrians are rally Germans anyway, why would they want us, and oh, Czech, was a phoney concept anyway, let them have the Sudatenland, we might muss up our evening clothes, and it would be such a "bore." I fully appreciate the lost generation who went off into the trenches, but it was the politicians who fouled the well, taking out vengence on the people of Germany - leaving it wide open for a "strong man."

The French were content to stay behind the Maginot line, and the others pretended not to see, wars, you see are not popular, when there is a depression on -- FOR THOSE who don't percieve the threat.

People think "as long as they're not hurting US -- and we mind our own business, than nothing will happen."

Wrong -- it gives them MORE impetus.

If it wasn't for the British standing virtually alone at the start of WWII (The russkies were on the other side, the French vitually useless, and feckless Americans thinking it wouldn't affect us if we only needed to help with lend lease.

I see a similar situation now. It's Islam or us. Which is it going to be? Where they are harboring terrorist, let's clean them out NOW - before they keep hitting us. Spill THEIR blodd on THEIR soil. They started this mess.

All the taliban has to do is wait out an impotent west.

Will the great grand children of those now in the west have their great granddaughters in burkqas? Will their great grandsons have their butts in the air praying to a false god 5 times a day?

Wake up and smell the coffee -- the enemy thinks we are soft -- and overall, we are.

If things continue on with trying to "understand" these people, I'm glad I won't be around to see it."

I think there's a Muslim usurper running my country right now, but you get scolded for calling a spade a spade. I am past the point of giving a damn what other people think of me.

I call them as I see them.

Islam and one world government types are threats. Both extermally, and interally.

Western civilization is at stake now, from enemies foreign and especially domestic - be it lying media, or narcisstic power mad leaders.

The hell with PC -- we need to take back our countries before it's too late.

[All you types who say they hate the Iraq war, if they HAD HAD nukes and used them you'd be cryin that Bush didn't "Do anything." So suck it up. Bush had no "luxury" of idle speculation, and he went on the best intelligence available at the time.

I agree with Father Back, save for one vital distinction between the Maccabees and the Taliban. The Maccabees were fighting against pagans who were trying to extirpate the true religion of Israel and its national existence, both willed by God. The Taliban are part of a campaign to conquer the world - however long it takes - and impose the political rule of a false religion and its law.

Father Back,What crossed my mind was that human suffering always looks for a cause. My reading of the Maccabees is that many Jews accepted Greek overlordship until it became hard to bear. The oppression of Judaism brought about a violent reaction, causing many to join the Maccabees until it became a popular movement impossible to subdue. The history of Afghanistan seems to be of warring tribesmen who gather together to attack the foreign invader.I suspect that in England even wet liberals would rally to repel a foreign invader. Winning hearts and minds seems a better policy than bombing and killing by foreign invaders, whose culture is so alien to the indigenous people.

He lives by the sword will die by the sword. Father, respectfully, our faith demands from us something more than repaying injury for injury. We have to be peacemakers, especially we Christians, we priests. In the case of Afghanistan conflict the gradualism that would be morally reasonable to expect from the invading coalition was sadly absent.

You said well, Father, about winning hearts and minds. In fact, that is central to General Sir Rupert Smith's book The Utility of Force. What he calls war amongst the people, as opposed to inter-state industrial war, involves winning over the population among whom the army fights, so that they freely give their allegiance to you and not to the enemy.

The objective of war has always been to change the will of the enemy: in former times this meant dealing his forces a decisive defeat in the field so that his government and people would recognise the fact of their defeat and surrender.

Modern counter-insurgency warfare is aimed primarily at the will of the population rather than the material means of the enemy, and that means more than just killing people.

Actually, Father, the modern history of Afghanistan has been about division between the Pashtun people in the south and east, and the non-Pashtun government in Kabul.

Regarding your last paragraph:

He who lives by the sword will die by the sword all right, provided that there's someone holding the sword by which he shall die. Unique to Islam among all the religions is that living by the sword is built into its fundamental theology.

What our faith requires of us Christians is one thing; what it requires from the civil authorities is somewhat different.

The State has the ministry of the sword to coerce evildoers in order to maintain or restore the peace; private citizens including private Christian citizens do not.

That is civil peace, but what of the peace of Christ? Frankly, Muslims and other non-believers can't have it unless they become Christians. That is what our faith demands of them, let alone of us.

Father, that's just the point. The revelation I use to inform my conscience is at Romans 13:1-7.The teaching of the Church, that service in the military and the police is lawful for Christians, is too well known for me to need to cite it.

Pope Benedict's father was a police officer. Pope John Paul II's father was a soldier who served an Emperor who had himself been a senior army officer, and was declared Blessed by the same Pope in one of his last acts before he died.

As to your allusion to Christian jihad (crusade?), I refer you to my comment that only Islam has a divine command to fight built into its fundamental theology. Jihad is commanded in order to establish the political rule of the Muslims who must then enforce divine law.

The Christian faith concurs with reason in reserving the power of war to the civil authorities, who are the legitimate ministers of God as soon as constituted, and it is for the supreme authority to decide on the use of force at its discretion according to right reason.

When Christians enlist in the military they do so in their capacity as citizens, and when they fight they do so for morally licit reasons of state. They do not fight to establish the Christian religion, but to safeguard goods which may include the civil right of religious liberty.

Given that the State has the duty to serve God according to the Catholic religion only (sometimes even the United Kingdom does so in fact, though very often it doesn't), it follows that it must use the means God has given it to ward off all things tending to hinder it in doing so.

Within the past couple of weeks I went to a lecture by Paul Oestreicher on war and pacifism in the three monotheistic religions. I made the following points from the floor afterwards:

For the Christian kings of the Middle Ages who had to oppose Muslims in jihad, this meant improvising the crusade as a matter of practical statecraft and military art. Since the crusading idea first developed in Spain there may have been some cross-cultural transfer from Muslims to Christians of the concept of fighting in the cause of God.

Gem,That is rude and insdulting, maybe you thought it humorous, it was not. I am not allow anymore of your comments on this post. In future please treat other correspondents with something which resembles respect.

Michael,That is your problem, you reason like a fundametalist Protestant, citing texts out of context, to back up already formed ideas, rather than allowing the Church to form those ideas - enough! I can't be bothered to read anymore.

Prime Minister Brown's and Newlabour's policy can be summed up in one word - destroy. Never mind what goes in its place, just destroy. He and Blair have already ruined the education system, the law, pubs, Parliament, the nations' finances etc to name but a few instances. An army could oppose him at some time, so better destroy that too, but carefully. Starve it of funds and equipment, so that it fail in its present missions. This will make the armed forces unpopular enough to be ineffective as a political force against the continuing salami slicing of the British way of life and the implementation of the devil's programme. Yes, he is the one behind it all. The solution is obvious - take up those Rosary beads; be quick about it. Be very serious about asking for Our Lady's help and protection as you use them.mikesviews

I'm not surprised you're anonymous, Anonymous, but it would not be morally licit for the armed forces to set themselves in opposition to the constituted Government.

That would engage Catechism #2243 and could not be countenanced under any circumstances unless the Government were treating the people in a manner which shocked the conscience of mankind.

Even then, there would not be serious prospects of success, nor minimal risk of worse disorders such as the catastrophe of civil war, unless action were reserved to the initiative of the Queen as the last guardian of the nation in extremis.

Ubi Petrus, ibi ecclesia, et ubi ecclesia vita eterna

Pray for Francis our Pope, and for the Church of God

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